The present invention relates to an eye treatment method and an eye treatment apparatus for restoring eyesight by electric stimulation.
Eyes form an image to the retina by the light reflected from an object through the cornea, the pupil, the crystalline lens and the vetreous body and send the signals of the image to the cerebrum through the optic nerve. The cerebrum recognizes the image signals sent thereto through the optic nerve as the sense of sight. When the eyes look at an object located near to it, the eyes largely refract light by thickening the crystalline lens by applying tension to the ciliary muscle of them, whereas when the eyes look at an object located far from it, they are focused on the object by reducing the refraction of light by making the thickness of the crystalline lens thin by recovering the ciliary muscle to which the tension has been applied. However, eyes cannot adjust the focal points of them well when they are in refractive myopia resulting from the refractive index of the cornea and crystalline lens which is larger than a usual refractive index, when they are in axial myopia resulting from an increase of length of eyeballs in the axial direction of light, when they are in refractive hyperopia resulting from the refractive index of the cornea and crystalline lens which is smaller than the usual refractive index, and when they are in axial hyperopia resulting from a decrease of length of eyeballs in the axial direction of light.
As a measure for the above problems, eyesight has been ordinarily corrected using eyeglasses or contact lenses. According to Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 7-289649, however, there has been proposed an electric stimulation apparatus for stimulating the optic nerve. The electric stimulation apparatus stimulates the temples with low-frequency signals of 44 Hz to treat achromatopsia to blue and with low-frequency signals of 70 Hz to treat achromatopsia to red as well as stimulates points of the head located above 4-5 cm from the hairline with low-frequency signals of 3-10 Hz to recover eyesight. In this case, however, since electrodes covered with a moisture-keeping-material is used to reliably stimulate points of the head where hair grows for recovering eyesight, the electrode has a complex structure and using method thereof is troublesome.